How is it that I never saw The Name of the Rose before today? Sean Connery and a young Christian Slater in a murder mystery set in an Alpine monastary in the 1300’s. Fine cinema.

My computer’s still sick, suffering from the terrible crash of Monday. I’ve been getting the “bleached pin-striped screen of death” as my screen fades to white with multi-colored vertical lines, locking all input devices along the way. I’m running Norton Crash Guard – quoth the Microsoft technician on Monday, “There’s your problem. Crash Guard actually causes crashes. You should get rid of it.” Okay, then! I’ve now reinstalled all the video drivers, and we’ll see where that gets me. Incidentally, while trying to recover my mail files, I installed Netscape Communicator to my system. Despite very carefully answering “No” to repeated queries of “Would you like Netscape to be your default …”, it went ahead and do so anyway to several key file types. It’s not just Microsoft that likes to arrogantly seize control of your system. Hmmm… I didn’t include a link anywhere, and this is a weblog afterall, so here’s one: End of a Ship at Sligo, a tramp steamer that went down off New England in 1925. A table from her saloon is the one which you rest your glass on in “Austie’s Nautical Museum Bar”, and one of her forecastle head ladders, is in Miss Katie Haren’s barn on Coney Island. They are all that remain today of the ill-fated vessel.

I see that I’m getting more readers than usual today, but the referrer log’s not telling me where you’re all coming from. I’m glad you’re here – pull up a chair and stay a while. And if you like what you see, tell whomever sent you here thanks.

Digging through a link provided by Memepool, I ran across a photographic essay titled The Difficulties of Being a Goof. The person here taped several pads of post-it notes and a pen to the side of a new stripmall building and watched the public discourse that resulted. A very entertaining read.

So, remember Cafe Press, where you can sell mugs, tshirts, and mouse pads with your graphics on them, at your prices? There’s a new site now called vStore that lets you set up a store front that sells brand name electronics, media, toys, tools, etc. You get commission for everything that you sell from your page, but you don’t get to set prices or determine exactly what items you can sell. I’m not sure what the point is here – adding another middleman will make prices higher, no? What incentives can I give people to visit my store other than “If you buy from me, I make money.” Kickbacks? I just don’t understand. And I know that some investors have pumped money into this thing, probably paying the people who set this all up a nice amount of money, for no real reason. And the company I work for is doing exciting things that make a difference (helping lower your electricity bill while saving the utilities a bundle of money) in obscurity. Hrmph.

No southern weblog would be complete without Kudzu links, so here’s one to The Kudzu Festival held each year in Blythewood, South Carolina (in the IGA parking lot!). You’ll enjoy one Indiana woman’s account of the Miss Kudzu pagant, where all the judging criteria got thown out when none of the contestants could walk in their gowns made of kudzu. The only one who could cross the stage without falling was declared winner, and she fell just past the “finish line”, taking down her mother.

I’ve found good reading recently at MetaJohn, another weblog I’ve found through my referrer logs. John claims Kestrel’s Nest as a source of design inspiration. Thanks!

The first global earthquake risk map has been released by the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program. Several years in the making, the map has few suprises, but does help drive the point home that half of the world’s largest cities are in an area of high risk. I wish there was a much larger version of the map there, though. It looks like South Carolina is in an earhquake zone, but I can’t really see.

One week from today: You will never seea Moon like this again, even if the world does not end seven days later. The rest of Bendy Pig is worth checking out, too.

Jorn over at Robot Wisdom has removed all weblog minibanners from his site. I found these very nice, especially the ones that changed on a regular basis, to show “headlines” or whatever. There is a similar set of minibanners over at the Weblog Monitor, but those are stored in a way to make them harder to change on a regular basis (and often inaccessible altogether!). I’ve kept my favorites down to the lower left, and will keep them as long as the owners maintain them.

UPDATE: Mike at LarkFarm now has a page of minibanners. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again: LarkFarm is an amazing weblog, and I’ve found nearly everything he’s posted both interesting and related to my own interests.